Queen of Fire

Frentis looked up to see Master Rensial finishing the other Kuritai, blocking an overhead swing with his sword as his other hand brought a dagger up to find the gap in the slave-elite’s armour between armpit and chest. The master stepped back as another figure erupted from the tent, a tall young man swinging a short sword in a double-handed grip, yelling in anger and grief, his blows frenzied and poorly aimed. Rensial sidestepped an overextended thrust and batted the sword from the young man’s grip before felling him with a swift backhand across the face.

 

The young man scrabbled back as Rensial advanced, hands coming up to protect his face, a barely coherent plea for mercy gibbering from his bloodied lips. Frentis went to stand over him, the young man shrinking back farther, eyes wide with terror. “You dishonour your father with this display,” Frentis told him with stern disapproval then inclined his head at Rensial. “Master, I believe it’s time to go.”

 

? ? ?

 

As he had hoped, Vinten’s attack had drawn attention to the southern perimeter and their progress from the camp was largely free of any interruption, shouting to every guard they met that the camp was facing a heavy assault and the commander slain. It had little effect on the Varitai but the Free Swords were soon hurrying to investigate. Only one attempted to block their way, a burly cavalryman of middling years with the bearing common to sergeants the world over.

 

“You saw the Honoured Commander fall?” he demanded, a grim fury plain in his craggy features.

 

“Two assassins,” Frentis said, putting a note of panic in his voice. “They killed the Kuritai as if they were children.”

 

“Calm down,” the Volarian ordered in his sergeant’s voice, frowning a little as he took a closer look at Frentis and Rensial, his eyes lingering on their inscribed armour. “Which company are you? What’s your name and rank?”

 

Frentis glanced around, finding no others within earshot and straightening from his fearful hunch. “Brother Frentis of the Sixth Order,” he said, jabbing his fore-knuckles into the sergeant’s upper lip. “Here on the queen’s business.”

 

He left the man barely conscious but alive. From his reaction to their tidings Frentis surmised he had been a long-serving subordinate to the fallen commander whose son might well benefit from such fiercely loyal counsel.

 

Dallin waited where they had left him on the eastern side of one of the larger rocks, keeping tight hold of the horses despite their skittishness at the burgeoning uproar from the camp. “Press hard,” Frentis told him, climbing into the saddle. “No rest till sunrise.”

 

? ? ?

 

The Volarian pursuit proved more sluggish than expected, the dust raised by their outriders not appearing until well past dawn the following day.

 

“Back in the Urlish they’d’ve been nipping our heels by now,” Dallin observed.

 

Frentis raised his spyglass to get a better view of their pursuers; thirty men, all bunched together. “I’m starting to suspect their best troops are all lying dead in the Realm.”

 

He ordered Dallin on ahead with instructions for Ivelda and Lekran whilst he and Rensial lingered to leave some obvious traces for the Volarians; an overturned stone, a strip of torn clothing on a gorse branch. He waited until the riders were no more than a mile distant and the infantry could be seen filing along a narrow track in their wake. They rode on for a time then reined in on the crest of a hill, plainly silhouetted against the sky. He could see the infantry more clearly now, a long column of Varitai all moving at a steady run and somehow still managing to stay in step. The outriders were coming on at a good pace, Frentis’s spyglass picking out two figures in front, a tall young man closely followed by a burly figure with a discoloured upper lip. Grief dispels caution, he thought in satisfaction, turning his mount towards the east once more.

 

Lekran came into sight some two hours later, axe raised as he waved from atop one of the monolithic boulders, the Garisai appearing out of the rocks on either side.

 

“All is ready?” Frentis called to him, dismounting to scramble up the boulder’s steep side.

 

“The Rotha bitch holds the southern flank with half the Garisai.” Lekran pointed to the box canyon below, a narrow gouge in the landscape some two hundred paces long and about fifty wide. The canyon was closed at the far end where a group of free fighters had made a suitably obvious camp, smoke rising from cookfires and meagre shelters raised among the rocks. “And the hook is baited.”

 

Frentis knew this was a gamble; he could only hope the Volarians’ fury would blind them to questioning why their enemies had chosen such a poor spot for a campsite. However, Lekran saw scant risk in the plan. “Volarians see slaves as less than men,” he said. “Incapable of true reason. Trust me, Redbrother. They’ll swallow it whole and we’ll make them choke.”

 

“The gorse?”

 

Lekran nodded to where Vinten’s archers crouched among the rocks just back from the canyon’s northern edge, surrounded by bundles of tight-bound gorse. Frentis began to clamber down from the boulder. “I’d best take my place. Remember to let a few Free Swords escape.”

 

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